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When I wrote in May about a landmark Southeast Asian "Lost Kingdoms" exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, I tried to get some information from the Met about the curators and the challenges involved in borrowing 160 pieces of sculpture, many of them large, from museums in nine countries. I didn't succeed, but people in Bangkok on August 15 can find out when principal curator John Guy speaks at the Siam Society. (Those in New York have until July 27 to catch the final days of "Lost Kingdoms of Early Southeast Asia.")

Guy is the Met Museum's curator for South and Southeast Asian Art. According to a Siam Society release, Guy "will present the principal themes of the exhibition and examine the pivotal role that Vaisnavism and Saivism played in the first millennium Southeast Asian state formation and the emergence of kingship, as witnessed by the region's rich sculptural legacy." If those terms are unfamiliar, recall that all the exhibition's Hindu and Buddhist pieces date from seven kingdoms of the 5th to 8th centuries, before the rise of the great Khmer Empire and the arrival of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Although Guy is the author of the exhibition catalog, Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, his previous work appears to have focused on India. His earlier books were about Indian temple sculpture, Indian textiles and Indian painters. The catalog (usually about $70) will be on sale at a discount at the Siam Society lecture.

Siam Society lectures and tours

Besides this particular lecture, tourists in Bangkok might be interested in attending one of the regular evening lectures held at the Siam Society, which is located very close to the Asoke/Sukhumvit intersection. Sometimes the speakers are local experts, sometimes they are visiting professors. Topics are quite extensive, ranging from history to archaeology to textiles. Entry for non-members is typically 150 baht. If you visit a lot, it might make sense to become a full-fledged member, which entitles you to free entry, use of the library and discounts on study trips.

The Lost Kingdoms catalog is jointly published by the Met and the Thai publisher River Books. Owned by the half-British great-granddaughter of King Chulalongkorn, Narisa Chakrabongse, River Books specializes in very handsome books about the art and culture of Thailand and neighboring countries. They do tend to be thick and expensive.

When I interviewed Narisa a long time ago, she said she avoided the term "coffee-table books," though, because she intended to publish books by art historians and other authorities with some intellectual heft. It's true that the text in the lavishly illustrated coffee-table books for sale in hotel lobbies and airports throughout East Asia rarely have much substance.

River Books is on the grounds of a Chakrabongse home in the old royal city, close to Tha Tien pier. The century-old wooden house there wasn'tthe main palace where Narisa's grandfather and his Russian wife lived. It's a little too modest for that but they did use house for relaxing and preparing to go out on river jaunts. It was then inherited by their sole child, Chula Chakrabongse, Narisa's father. Between the house and the river, Narisa has recently built a half-dozen rooms and suites for paying guests. Depending on size, the Chakrabongse Villas run from around $200 to $900 per night.